How ethnically diverse is the tech workforce?

Ethnic background of all engineers on cord

Among engineers looking for technical and product positions in the UK, EU and US, 61.60% are white, 23.92% are Asian and 5.79% are black, with 8.68% from other ethnic backgrounds.

This data is based on people looking for work on cord. In order to do so, engineers are required to have experience working a technical or product role in a technology company in the UK, EU or US, with the majority being software engineers. This means this data is highly reliable and relevant for other people who match this criteria, as opposed to other sources that often cover the “technology industry” as a whole. It is therefore felt that the data discussed here gives a unique insight into ethnic minority representation among people working in tech and product-specific positions.

Ethnic background of engineers on cord by function

Data is the most ethnically diverse function with only 54.22% white engineers. Development is the least ethnically diverse, with white engineers comprising 66.47% of all developers.

Data has the highest representation of Asian engineers, at 29.79%. Product & Design has the lowest proportion of Asian engineers, at 20.07%.

7.10% of Infrastructure engineers are black, giving this function the highest level of black representation. Development has the lowest black representation, with black engineers comprising 4.26% of all developers.

Ethnic background of developers on cord by job title

Note: any person who uses cord to find work is referred to as an "engineer". "Developers," in this context, refers to all engineers who work in a specifically Development-focused position.

Front End is the least ethnically diverse job title within Development: 69.85% of Front End developers are white. Back End is the most ethnically diverse, at 64.69% white representation.

However, black representation in development is highest in job titles where white representation is also high. 3.97% of Back End developers, 4.29% of Full Stack developers, and 5.07% of Front End developers are black.

Asian representation is reversed: it is highest, at 22.45%, among Back End developers, and lowest, at 16.32%, among Front End developers.

Ethnic background of engineers on cord by seniority

Senior leadership positions within the tech industry are not ethnically diverse. 68.23% of engineers at leadership (i.e. senior management) level are white, while just 2.89% are black and 20.98% Asian.

However, new cohorts of engineers entering the job market appear to be more ethnically diverse. Black engineers make up 8.90% of those at entry level, where Asian representation is 29.63% and white engineers make up only 51.58%.

Non-white representation is 41.11% among junior engineers, 41.62% among mid-level engineers, 37.98% among senior engineers and 35.40% among lead engineers.

Ethnic background of engineers on cord by years' experience

Despite comprising 51.58% of engineers at "entry" level, white engineers account for 58.63% of engineers with 0 years' experience, 58.62% of engineers with 1 year of experience, and 59.58% of engineers with 2 years' experience, which suggests that white engineers may consider themselves more senior than non-white engineers with similar levels of experience do (seniority data on cord is drawn from engineers self-defining their seniority level on creating their profiles).

Black representation is highest among engineers with 0 years' experience (7.55%), followed by those with 1 year's experience (7.46%). It is lowest among those with 15 years'+ experience, at 3.20%.

Asian representation is highest among engineers with 14 years' experience at 27.96%, and lowest among those with 15 years'+ experience at 20.73%.

Demand

Note that, in this article, "message requests" counts approaches received by engineers on cord from companies, regardless of whether or not the engineer accepted the request. The average number of message requests received per engineer is used as a proxy for how in-demand engineers in any given category are.

Engineer demand by ethnic background and function

Black engineers are the most in-demand ethnic group in both Development, where the average black engineer receives 6.9 message requests each. However, in all other functions, white engineers are most in-demand, receiving 6.5 messages each in Infrastructure, 2.8 each in Data, and 3.2 each in Product & Design.

Asian engineers are not the most in-demand group in any function, and are the least in-demand in Product & Design.

Developer demand by ethnic background and job title

White Front End developers receive more message requests, on average, than any other group of developers. However, black Back End and Full Stack developers are more in-demand than white counterparts, while Asian developers trail both ethnic groups in all three developer job titles.

Engineer demand by ethnic background and skillset

As the previous section suggests, primary skills associated with Back End programming (Java, C#, C++, Node.js) see more message requests received by black engineers listing them as a primary skill than any other ethnic group, while Front end skills such as JavaScript and React see more message requests sent to white engineers than black engineers. Python and SQL buck this trend by seeing more message requests sent to white engineers, while .NET sees more black engineers receive message requests than any other ethnic group.

Black engineers who know Node.js stand out as particularly in-demand, with an average of 12.1 message requests received.

Asian engineers don't receive the most message requests in any skillset. Those who know Python or SQL receive fewer messages than any ethnic group, including "Other".

Note: primary skills are selected by engineers who create cord profiles. Each engineer can select up to two primary skills.

Engineer demand by ethnic background and seniority

At every seniority level, white engineers are more in-demand than black or Asian counterparts. The only seniority level in which a non-white ethnic group receives more message requests per engineer than white engineers is entry-level, where "Other" ethnic backgrounds receive the most message requests.

Engineer demand by ethnic background and years' experience

At most levels of experience, either black or white engineers are the most in-demand. Asian engineers trail their black and white counterparts for message requests at almost all experience levels.

Key Insights

• 61.60% of technology engineers are white, 23.92% are Asian and 5.79% are black, with 8.68% from other ethnic backgrounds

• Data is the most ethnically diverse function and has the highest proportion of Asian engineers. Infrastructure sees highest black representation

• Black or white engineers tend to be the most in-demand across different functions, job titles, skillsets and seniorities

Data Disclaimer

Data refers to 79,526 engineers across all locations (primarily London, Europe/Remote, and New York) on cord.

Ethnic background is predicted by a third-party API (https://namsor.app/) based on an engineer's name. The API makes mistakes, but is accurate in 90-95% of cases.

Messages received data refers to the lifetime message count for these engineers - i.e. the total number of message requests each engineer has received from creating their cord profile.